Andrew Malcolm in the LATimes on Obama’s audible on a press conference:
Here’s the scary thing for the new White House: the terrifying words “Jimmy Carter” have started appearing in print and on the air, recalling the ex-Georgia governor’s ineptness and…….apparent powerlessness in handling his Iranian (hostage) issues in the late 1970s. That impression lead to 12 years of Reagan-Bush Republican White Houses.
Which has got to scare the Administration.
Of course, Obama can still salvage this one; quite easily, in fact, if he recognizes (unlikely as this is) that the Mullahs are not dealing with him in good faith, and that all of his olive branches (which every Administration since Reagan has presented them, by the way) are being used for basiji riot batons.
Is Obama so committed to the notion of repudiating Bush’s Wilsonian doctrine that he’ll ignore the fact that stoking emnity with the US helps keep the mullahs in power? And that he’s no less a target for this enmity than Bush or Reagan were?
On the one hand – is Obama “committed” to anything?
On the other – Obama has built his entire foreign policy (to the extent that he has one at all) on the ideal that terrorist theocrat thugs are people too, and deserve just as much respect as the British Parliament.
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